SEO News Roundup: Webmasters Believe Penguin 4.0 Now Rolling Out

Tom Williams brings us all the latest search engine optimisation news, including changes to local packs, PageSpeed updates, mobile-friendly alerts for site owners, and the latest Whiteboard Friday discussion.

Is Penguin 4.0 Finally on its Way?

Speculation was rife at the end of last week that Google could be finally testing the Penguin 4.0 algorithm.

Google Warning Site Owners if Site Not Mobile-Friendly

Jennifer Slegg has an old site that is not mobile-friendly. She shared the search results she sees when searching for her own site. As you can see, the search returns a snippet saying ‘Your page is not mobile friendly’. This message is a hyperlink to a Google help page on making sure your site is mobile-friendly.

The new warnings come ahead of an impending Google mobile-friendly algorithm update, due in May 2016. So, if your site is not mobile-friendly yet, now is definitely the time to get started.

Google Advises on Localised Content

Responding to a question in StackExchange, Mueller explained that all content, including static image title tags, should be consistent in language. Therefore, a German language site should use German language alt tags.

Alt tags are seen as text on a page by Google, and therefore using different languages can potentially cause confusion.

Google Updates Search Quality Raters Guidelines

Looking for a little light bedtime reading? Google has updated its Search Quality Raters Guidelines. Previously published in November 2015, the new, updated edition was published on 28 March, 2016.

While the original November 2015 document ran to 160 pages, the slightly condensed revision is 146 pages long.